


Magnificent Mile

by tiamatv



Series: South Side Swing [4]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, BAMF Castiel (Supernatural), BAMF Dean Winchester, Chicago Mafia, Coming Out, Homophobic Language, M/M, Non-Graphic Violence, Openly Bisexual Dean Winchester, Russian Mafia, Semi-Public Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-23
Updated: 2020-05-23
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:46:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24332290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tiamatv/pseuds/tiamatv
Summary: Dean knows this dive bar is a little outside of the Outfit's territory, but he's here to drink, not compare dicks with the North Side Gang. It's in the thirties and not sleeting, so that practically counts as summer here in Chicagoland. The Bratva are in town for more negotiations, but Dean's grudgingly decided that most of them are alright. Some of them are a little more alright than others.It was supposed to be a quiet night.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Series: South Side Swing [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1734220
Comments: 82
Kudos: 324





	1. Magnificent Mile

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger warning: several lines of derogatory homophobic language, and some non-graphic violence.
> 
> \\\Laura, Queen of the Damned//[wearetheluckyones](http://www.archiveofourown.com/users/wearetheluckyones_Laura/pseuds/wearetheluckyones_Laura) has been stuck with betaing for me through this whole thing--I am so grateful!

It was supposed to be a _quiet_ night. Bobby and Gabriel were meeting tomorrow as per usual, and Cas was in town with his crew. It’d been pretty copacetic all told, lately, the first shipments had gone smooth, and Sam didn’t look like he wanted to leap bodily between him and Cas every time they met up anymore. (Instead, he picked Cas’s brain about spreadsheets until even that coarse whiskey voice of Cas’s couldn’t make them sound interesting to Dean. Goddammit, Sam.)

Yeah, everyone seemed pretty pleased in general that he and Cas hung out now and again and weren’t gonna kill each other. _Uh-huh._ Dean smirked into his whiskey. They really had no fucking idea. The number of times they’d seen each other come, well, Dean wasn’t counting anymore, probably because he _couldn’t_.

The Bratva were alright, though, all told—that kid Kevin was still jumpy as _fuck_ and Dean kind of thought Rufus and Victor just enjoyed messing with him. Inias was okay but had even less of a sense of humor than Cas. (Possible? Apparently.) Anna was kind of a badass, and Dean was pretty sure Hannah was in love with Cas, but he was very sure they _all_ needed to watch out for that lady Naomi, ‘cause she was just not up to good business.

“I can’t see how she would possibly make any trouble,” Cas told him, serious as always as he looked down into his vodka, turning the tumbler slowly between his slender fingers. “She’s an excellent facilitator, nothing more.”

“Uh-huh. That’s real funny coming from you, buddy,” Dean pointed out with a snort. “You’re an _accountant._ ”

One corner of Cas’s lips tipped up in a smile. “And you’re a mechanic,” he said, all agreeable, as if that made any sense at all.

They were only having a drink in this North Side shithole because the damned dive was the one place in Chicagoland that served a certain kind of Polish vodka. Dean had laughed and complained and rolled his eyes, because not even _Sammy_ was willing to go with Cas to get a drink here. But what the fuck, it was just one drink.

Then, well, maybe they’d go get up to other things. Familiar things. Good things. _Yeah_.

It was supposed to be a quiet night.

*_*_*_*

There was a certain kind of calm that settled down Dean’s back when he knew there was gonna be a fight, and there was not gonna be any talking anyone’s way out of it.

_“Oh, look. Will you look at that? Chicago Outfit’s pet fag got let off his leash.”_

The sharp, vivid purity of his anger felt _good_ —Dean didn’t pretend it didn’t. The insult didn’t even bother him on a personal level, to be honest. Of course he couldn’t let it stand, though. He didn’t plan to. But Dean knew what he was, what he wasn’t, and what these assholes were, and what they weren’t. They could call him whatever the Hell they wanted, and it wouldn’t touch _him_.

He was Dean fucking Winchester, he was the Chicago Outfit’s street boss, he represented the goddamned best of what the Chicago Mafia had to offer. No-one talked down about his _famiglia._ No-one talked down about his family. And no-one used those words _anywhere_ in Dean’s hearing.

Not anymore. Not now. Not ever. _That_ was why someone was gonna bleed tonight. Gordon had thought he was being funny, that last time—thought that just ‘cause he wasn’t talking about _Dean_ , that sayin’ that sort of shit was alright? Yeah, well, Gordon hadn’t been back inside the Chicago city limits in two years.

Dean wasn’t apologetic for what he was—bi, gay, straight, whatever. He wasn’t sorry for what he was gonna do. He hadn’t done anything to cause this. But it was gonna _happen_.

Dean tipped back the rest of his drink in the ugly silence, and when it was empty, he put his glass down, lightly. He slid off his chair, turned around to face the five guys who were smirking at him like they’d made the funniest joke in the world.

In a way, they sort of had.

Oh, sure, they thought they were so brave because there were five of them, and Dean wasn’t in South Chicago. The bartender had already beat feet. The other two who’d been drinking near the door had stepped out—Dean had heard them leave. Oh, someone had planned this.

Dean laughed, and the sound of it wasn’t nice, and it might not have exactly been sane.

Sure, Sam was bigger than he was, and sure, he could throw down like no-one’s business. Everyone knew why Sam Winchester was _consiglieri:_ because he was the smarter brother, and Dean was proud of the overgrown squirt.

People, though, people were stupid. People forgot that Sammy was the _good_ one between the two of them. People forgot that Dean had earned his position with his smile but he’d kept it with his fists. People forgot that Dean Winchester _liked_ to fight.

It’d been a long time since someone had called him the Demon Winchester to his face, but once upon a time, Dean had earned that name.

“And he’s found himself a boyfriend for the night! You fuck this fag good, boyfriend? Isn’t that cute,” one of them added, gleeful in the face of Dean’s silence, like he couldn’t see the shovel he was holding, dipping into his own grave dirt.

Oh, that was just the _best_. The absolute _best_.

“Oh, yeah, it sure is, real cute,” Dean crooned. “I like cute.” He rolled one shoulder, and let out a slow, easy breath through pursed, smiling lips. “My cute as fuck bisexual ass is gonna send you all to Hell, so I hope you like cute, too.”

They really thought it was gonna be five against one. They really did. Hell, even if it _had_ been Dean probably could have taken them.

He liked the way he got all the little details in moments like this—a droplet of sweat even though it was February and a balmy thirty degrees outside, the jerky flutter of an Adam’s apple when someone swallowed hard, the tense shift of legs in jeans and boots. They weren’t close enough for him to get that first stink of uncertainty, but eyebrows twitched, lips tightened in a parody of confidence.

Dean glanced over his right shoulder at the sound of a soft, wordless whiskey rumble.

These assholes must have seen them come in together, and figured that they’d double their fun. Goading Dean into a fight they thought he couldn’t win _and_ making Dean’s pick for the night piss himself—yeah, that sounded awesome, right? Just some pretty blue-eyed businessman walking the wilds of River North for the night, right?

Dean felt his lips curve into a genuinely amused grin. Hey, he couldn’t even blame the fuckers for _that_ assumption. Oh, yeah, this was all gonna turn out all kinds of fucking _adorable_.

Everyone knew Dean Winchester didn’t sleep with Mafia, and everyone knew he didn’t tap twice.

The joke here was on them, and it was real, _real_ funny.

There was a steady, silky darkness to Castiel’s expression when he looked back, those gorgeous blue eyes steady on Dean. There wasn’t any anger to be seen in him, either. He might have even been just a little _amused_. Cas didn’t say anything to him, though—he just turned the rest of the way around on his bar stool, hands resting calmly on the ugly polyester slacks wrapping those firm, thick thighs. His gaze left Dean’s, but he didn’t stand up. When he tipped his head a little to the side, the motion was familiar, but there wasn’t any confusion on it, and it was sure as Hell not _cute_.

Cas _didn’t_ have an Eastern European accent at all, not that Dean had ever heard, so the rumbling rush of foreign syllables deep in his throat was even more of a surprise—more than he’d ever heard him say in Russian before, or whatever that was. Judging from the widening eyes from four of the five, and the narrowing eyes of the last, they understood what he was saying even if Dean didn’t.

Polish branch of the North Side gang, then, huh? Well, _that_ was good. Arthur Ketch had already been wagging his dick at Bobby and calling for measuring tape. No-one to blame but himself if it got cut off.

One of the five men in front of them was sneering, now—Dean thought he kind of recognized him, this tall, weedy guy with eyes that didn’t know where to focus. What was it, some English street name… Alastair? He made like he was gonna make a comment in Cas’s direction, then, miraculously, actually thought better of it. Too bad. Dean sorta would have liked to hear them beg.

The gravelly burr was still in Castiel’s voice when he asked, without turning, “Would you like them for yourself, Winchester, or may I have the pleasure of assisting?”

Oh. Well then. ‘Winchester,’ was it? A formal request, then. Dean smirked at him. Still so damned polite.

“I dunno. You gonna kill any of them?” Dean asked, with genuine curiosity.

Cas’s head tipped to the other side, considering the stretch of the empty tables and chairs like the five dead men walking weren’t even there. He didn’t look back at Dean. “I might.”

He sounded like he was serious. Cas-serious. Dean thought this probably should have bothered him, except… it didn’t. It _definitely_ should have bothered everyone else there. There was the ruffle and rustle of feet as someone shifted, and the creak of leather as two men exchanged glances.

“The Novak gonna get pissed at you if you play?” Dean continued, all casual.

Four faces went pale. On any other day, that kinda would have pissed Dean off as much as the sight of it cheered him now. What the fuck were he and his, chopped liver? But that ‘any other day’ wasn’t today. Until pretty recently, the Chicago Outfit and the North Side Gang had existed in a nicely balanced little armed détente. It wasn’t war yet. Ketch would probably disavow anything these meat sacks were saying. Bobby would be _not happy_ if Dean dug graves just for someone calling him names.

Cas, though? Cas wasn’t Outfit or North Gang. Cas was Bratva. Cas was the Novak’s brother.

Today, Castiel “Angel” Novak was not Bobby’s problem.

“No. Gabriel leaves me to my own devices,” Castiel told him, his voice soft and low as a promise. His eyes flicked towards Dean for just a moment before turning back to the five men in front of them with that dark, intense, _intense_ gaze. Even without it turned on him the familiar look on his eyes was making a slow, achy pleasure roll through Dean’s pelvis. Then Cas’s full lips curved up, just at the corners and oh, _shit_. “But I don’t want to detract from your enjoyment.”

Dean licked his own lips, slowly, the red haze in his eyes lending a pink cast to Cas’s pretty, pretty face, the blown-out pupils with just that tiny edge of sapphire blue. Castiel’s smile widened.

He got it. He _got it_.

 _Fuck._ In the comfortable, electricity-edged certainty that had taken over his whole body now, Dean considered that he really might love this sonofabitch.

The five in front of them didn’t look so confident now. Through the peaceful, lovely scarlet mist, their faces were tinged with yellow and gray. In fact, one of them looked kind of like he might be sick.

“Nah,” Dean told Cas, casually. “For you, I can share.”

It wasn’t quiet, but it was so easy.

It was all so very, very easy.

*_*_*_*

Dean didn’t _do_ alleyways. He didn’t pretend he was a classy customer—yeah, he _did_ keep a hookup room in the back of a bar—but alleyways were just—no. Especially since they’d left five men on the floor in various states of bleeding or unconscious. He didn’t think any of them were gonna be stupid enough to call the police, but if the bartender came back, he gave it even odds on just how much they needed an ambulance, and whether one would get to them on time. Alastair had looked shattered on the floor. Dean had held him down and let Cas break him, and it had been _good_.

That was what it was. Dean wasn’t worried about it. But this current situation, he wanted to say, was all Cas’s fault.

Dean had had it under control. He really had. Even those glimpses of Cas that he’d seen out of the corner of his eyes, the damned trench coat flaring around him like a wave, hadn’t quite done it. Even the hot press of Cas’s back and shoulder against Dean’s when the knives came out and they went back to back, well, that had sent a shock of gorgeous tingles through Dean’s blood. But he had it under control.

Then Cas stopped, right outside the bar’s insulation pocket. He looked thoughtfully at the bloody knife in his hand—the long, straight, round-handled blade he’d shaken right out of the sleeve of his trench coat, so long it must have been strapped the full length of his forearm and metal all the way from tip to pommel. And he pulled out a fucking handkerchief.

Because Castiel Novak carried a _handkerchief_ along with a knife up his sleeve.

Dean stared as Cas cleaned his knife off with a slow, wordless hum, then looked up to meet Dean’s eyes. His head tipped just a little to the side, Dean’s inquisitive little bird. Wordless, he reached out a hand to Dean with the little bit of bloodstained cloth in it, offering its use for Dean’s own blade.

And yeah… Dean was done, just _done_.

His Impala was parked in this alleyway, stretched out glittering with the doors barely able to open for the pressure of the walls so close on either side, and Dean backed Cas roughly towards the hood until the back of his knees hit bumper and Castiel went down.

Cas didn’t fall against it, though—reached a hand back quick to press against the hood to keep himself upright, hitched his ass up until his weight was partly on Dean’s car without looking away from Dean’s face, and the sight of him stretched out against Baby’s front like that, well. Dean’s blood was already twisting, hot and sharp in the cold. Even without the red haze over his vision he thought that that was the most fucking beautiful thing he’d ever seen. Dean’s polite Russian sociopath was half laid out over Dean’s Baby, still fully and formally dressed from trenchcoat on down—blade in one hand and a little of his own blood at the corner of his mouth.

Dean knew he was pretty rumpled up himself, they’d gotten a few hits in, and his side ached where he was growing a set of bruised ribs, he had a shallow slash through his bicep—the fuckers; they’d drawn knives first. _No-one_ , least of all Dean, had expected Cas to shake what looked like half a _sword_ out of the sleeve of his trench coat.

That insane blade clunked on metal and tumbled to the ground, and the hand that had been holding it clutched at Dean’s waist as Dean pressed a knee up onto his girl’s hood and did all he could to crawl into Cas fully clothed. He licked at the split at the corner of Cas’s mouth, his lip not bleeding anymore but even more swollen and puffy now than it normally was, and tasted old iron and sweat, and moaned aloud. “Fuck, _Cas._ I gotta—I gotta have you. _Now_.”

“Damn it—we are both _far_ too old to be ‘making out’ against a car, Dean!” Castiel groaned, but his hips lifted up and into Dean’s rather than pressing down and away, his hard-on riding against Dean’s, sweet as a hello. The hand he wasn’t using to keep himself sitting up was clamped tight in Dean’s shoulders, fingers flexing, and Dean only considered that a bonus, ‘cause he could just about hear the air quotes in that.

“S’not just a car, it’s Baby,” Dean mumbled and ducked his head, flipping open the first few buttons of Castiel’s shirt to renew the fading hickey he’d left against his favorite spot—one advantage of the way Cas wore his ties so weird, easy access for other things. When it didn’t look like his Russian was gonna complain anymore, he reached down to fumble at Cas’s belt, throwing it clinking open with a shaking hand and only taking care with the zipper because he could already feel how hard he was in there.

Cas seemed to be all on board, his big hands already yanking Dean’s undershirt impatiently out from inside his jeans, but his eyes went wide when Dean extracted Cas’s cock out over the top of his briefs, tucking the white cotton underwear that he couldn’t believe the guy still wore under his balls. Mm-mm, Cas definitely got wetter than he did, and tonight he was already wet enough to _drip._ “Dean, what are you—we’re outside—"

Dean dropped his feet to brace the ground, wrapped both hands around and under those fantastic thighs, and shoved Cas the rest of the way up and onto the hood with a push that his back was probably gonna feel later.

Then put an elbow down on metal already warming from body heat and sucked Cas’s dick into the back of his mouth—too far, too fast, bitter salt and a sudden ache in his jaw and _so good_.

Cas’s head thumped against the windshield, his whole body made a perfect arch on Baby’s hood, and yep, there went _that_ objection.

Dean truly didn’t have anything against condoms. He’d used them for pretty much his whole life, and before pretty recently he hadn’t so much as given a hummer bare since he’d been too young and stupid to know better.

But he’d had Cas’s cock in his mouth often enough over the past, whatever, nine months that he wasn’t sure he could go back. Anyone who said that the experience of giving a really good, really _intense_ blowjob was the same with latex as without was lying through their fucking teeth. There just wasn’t anything like the slip-slide of _skin_ on his tongue, the twitch and motion of him blood-hot with nothing between when Dean pursed his lips against it and tugged with no teeth, nothing but lips and suction, and his _taste_ when he slipped his tongue in, mopped up all that thick wet.

Dean took him down fast, he was gonna sound like a smoker tomorrow for this, and it was messy and sloppy and he couldn’t even imagine wanting it any other way. With Dean’s nose all the way up against neat black curls, Cas smelled like sweat and musk and detergent, and he tasted like sin. When Dean moaned loudly around him, the sound of Cas’s hands scrabbling for purchase against Baby’s dark paint job and not finding any made his lips tense in a smile.

Smiling with his lips stretched so tight stung a little—Cas wasn’t the only one who’d gotten it in the face tonight—but the sharpness of that was bright and real.

Cas didn’t grab his hair this time even when Dean gently cupped his balls in his palm—very gently, Cas could get _really_ sensitive there sometimes. Dean kind of suspected the reason Cas’s hands were nowhere near his head was because all his muscle control had run out the alleyway rather than because he was being polite, because the way his hips were moving was _nothing_ like polite. There was really something about that: reducing Castiel Novak, six feet of cold threat and leashed violence, to a cock in Dean’s throat, the shift of lean hips and those intense, intense blue eyes squeezed shut—

Oh, no, that wouldn’t do, not at _all_.

Dean pulled off him—slowly, slowly, so Cas couldn’t miss it, so those blue eyes came open and Cas’s face tilted down to peer at him with his mouth already open in a pitiful whine of protest.

“You don’t watch,” Dean threatened, and yep, that was his voice, almost as raspy as Cas’s normally was, “and I’m gonna stop.”

Lying between Cas’s legs like he was, he felt the way that made Cas shudder in a wave. It sent a thick drop of wet beading up, just ready for Dean’s mouth.

But Cas didn’t look away. Not even when Dean swallowed him again and again. Not even when his groans got loud enough to echo through his clenched teeth. Not even when his hands finally did start working again and he slapped his fingers warningly on Dean’s shoulder ‘cause he was always polite like that no matter how often Dean let him know he didn’t need to be. (Goddamned _adorable._ )

Dean hummed his permission and watched that face with his eyes turned up and just fucking let himself _enjoy_ the way Cas’s cock pulsed and went rigid on his tongue before he had to concentrate and swallow—and swallow and swallow, _Jesus_ , Cas really needed to take better care of himself.

So yeah, maybe they were both panting by the time Dean slid off him in a slow pop with plenty of tongue, just the way Cas liked it, his lips straightening Cas’s foreskin out over the tip of him with a soft final smack. Dean licked his lips and had to roll his jaw a little, but grinned at the sight of those blue-eyes half-closed now, Cas’s dark head lolling to the side, his trench coat open and puddled on Baby’s dark finish, cock dangling free and not even soft yet.

Yeah, okay, now _that_ was a picture worth a thousand words.

Castiel reached down to tuck himself back into his briefs and gestured at Dean with loose fingers, looking so fucked-out sprawled across the windshield that Dean wondered with a chuckle if he was gonna fall asleep right here, outside, lying on the hood in thirty degree weather.

Wondered for just a weird, disconnected second if Cas, who seemed to really like touristy shit, might want to go driving out towards Lisle, sneak into the Morton Arboretum after sunset. The stars around there in that nature preserve were unreal and Baby’s hood was a nice place to look at them from. Maybe make out a bit in that pure, cold darkness. Just a bit.

Okay, that was… sorta sappy. Even for Dean. Especially with the hard-on he had right now. Huh.

But Cas got him by the collar and pulled him up and up. His mouth was so slack and soft against Dean’s that Dean seriously considered for a second that he could maybe just keep crawling up and put his cock right against those soft lips, fuck right into him. Cas could take it, sometimes he even really liked that kind of thing just as much as Dean did. Not the right angle, though, not here—

Cas had the trick of Dean’s button-fly jeans now. He didn’t even need both hands to flick them open, and the other was still drawing warm lines against Dean’s spine by the time he had Dean out. _See, Cas? Boxers, much easier_. The cold night air should have made it feel _less_ good, not more, but Cas’s hand around him felt even hotter against the contrast.

It wasn’t quite right, even with how hard Dean was, the fight-sweat at his groin making his curls damp. The pressure was right, the pressure was _perfect_ , the pace of it as Cas stripped lazily at him enough to roll Dean’s eyes back in his head. It was still too dry—Cas’s calluses so familiar, rough in just the right way but just _not enough_.

Cas’s lips moved in a low, grumbling flutter against the side of Dean’s neck—from experience Dean suspected it was a muttered complaint again about Dean being circumcised, which was always a little hilarious but was also just _not_ his own fucking fault—but Cas also broke them apart and raised a hand to Dean’s mouth in an impatient gesture. Dean licked, got him sloppy—Cas tasted of metal and sweat, and the tacky heat of his hand was just right this time when it wrapped around Dean’s cock.

Mmm, _yeah,_ oh yeah.

Dean had his knees under him for leverage and was grinding into the circle of Cas’s fingers, now, and the slip-slide of his own precome was almost as good as a dab of lube. _Fuck_ Cas had gotten so good at this, they traded handjobs as much as anything else and practice made perfect was not just a phrase. He could press Dean against the wall and tug an orgasm out of him almost faster than Dean could pull one off on _himself_ , now. Even lazing back against Baby’s hood and looking pretty damned debauched, Cas was licking his lips like taking Dean to pieces was something he could almost taste.

“Cas—” Dean breathed, and had to stop talking for a second as Cas brought his fingers up and up and almost all the way off, popping his crown tightly through the ring of his fingers. The hand on Dean’s back under his shirt pulled him closer, pulled him in. “Gonna… Cas, you’re still dressed—” yeah, Cas was still wearing all his clothes, just his fly open—there was a thought in there somewhere. Somewhere.

“It’s alright,” Castiel muttered, his eyes fixed down at where the head of Dean’s cock was sliding in and out of his fist. His other hand left Dean’s skin and slid between them—reached down and shoved aside the edges of his suit jacket, rucked up his shirt, baring those abs that still made Dean want to lick them every single time he saw them. “Come on me, Dean.”

Fuck. Yes, _yes_.

Dean hunched in and in and in, moaned too loudly against the crook of Cas’s jaw as the orgasm seemed to roll up too fast from between his legs and streak between Cas’s fingers. Cas didn’t stop stroking him through it, just gentled his grip a little— _fuck_ he knew that drew Dean out, kept him from getting too sensitive. He painted Cas’s abs with spunk, got some on the front of his white briefs where they were already half-translucent from how wet _Cas_ had been, he was gonna just mix them all up, mess _Cas_ up—

Cas didn’t let him go too fast, just carefully let the motions slow, still thumbing very gently across the head of Dean’s cock and watching the wet slide of his fingers like they were the most fascinating thing he’d ever seen. Dean had just barely peeled his face off the sweaty corner of Cas’s neck and was still trying to remember how to breathe when Cas finally released him, and Dean crawled up to plant a lazy kiss against Cas’s earlobe. He couldn’t see the color of those eyes in the alleyway, but he knew that crinkle at the corners of them, though, the way one side of his full mouth was pulled up. Okay, that was trouble, because Cas was looking so goddamned smug that Dean just _knew_ he was up to something, he knew—

Castiel was still looking right into Dean’s eyes when he raised his wet fingers to those full, pink lips. Licked, long and vivid. Sucked his own thumb in.

 _Fuck._ Dean’s chin jerked towards his chest and his back rebelled. One last tense roll of orgasm yanked itself right out of him, just on the edge of too much, the way it always was when he didn’t have a hand on him. He curled into Cas’s body, panting, gripping onto his broad shoulders to settle himself.

Okay, Dean knew he got horny from fighting—and what more from the blowjob he’d given Cas after. He knew that, that _always_ ramped him up. But _fuck_. Wow.

He flopped on top of Castiel. Cas grunted, but didn’t shove Dean off.

“It’s cold,” Castiel muttered into the notch of his collarbone, after not nearly long enough.

Sometimes this guy wanted to snuggle for hours and sometimes it was like he’d never heard of afterglow. Dean snorted out a weak laugh, and tugged down Cas’s button-down, though not without admiring the _mess_ he’d made of the guy. “Seriously? It’s thirty degrees in February. It’s practically summer,” he muttered. “Some Russian _you_ are.” Then, “Ow,” as Cas cuffed him upside the head.

“I swear I will stab you,” the Parakh of a centuries-old Russian Mafia family told him, in his deep growl of a voice wrapped in a flat American accent, “Once again: _Brooklyn._ ”

They both peeled themselves off the hood—okay, yeah, even with their body heat, with sweat and spunk drying it _was_ getting a little cold. They stumbled into the back of the Impala because with his knees feeling the way they were, Dean just couldn’t be fucked to deal with maneuvering the front seat far back enough to fit them both comfortably without having to deal with the steering wheel. Neither of their limbs seemed to be moving right. He wasn’t in any shape to drive, not yet—adrenaline-hazy, sex-drunk.

But once it warmed up from their body heat, it was pretty comfy in the back seat anyway, side by side. Cas was sitting properly upright but with his head tipped over in Dean’s direction, but Dean didn’t bother: he turned half onto his side with one leg pulled up between them so he could reach over with the arm that hadn’t had a close encounter with a knife. He thought Cas might be sniffing him, he had his nose buried in Dean’s hair, but that would not be the weirdest thing the guy ever did.

“Hey. What did you say to them, anyway?” Dean asked, lazily, running a nail lightly over the delicate, soft skin that edged right underneath Cas’s underwear line, his briefs flashing white with how his fly was still open. There hadn’t been much for it with the mess—Dean had wipes in the glove compartment, yeah, but Cas hadn’t complained, and Dean wasn’t gonna pretend that knowing his come was all over Cas’s abs and his underwear wasn’t hitting him in just the right places right now.

“Mm.” The hum vibrated through Dean’s scalp. “That ‘boyfriend’ was a word too silly for what I feel for you,” Cas answered, muffled into the soft, vulnerable patch of skin at Dean’s temple. He sounded wrecked and sleepy and so damned _content_ that it sent a tingle through Dean’s fingers, still tracing lazy rings along those little inches of pale skin just under Cas’s waistline.

Then the words were actually _words_ and not a sex rumble, and Dean’s hand went still.

Oh.

Oh, shit.

Dean wasn’t mad. He wasn’t… even surprised. Fuck—Dean… really _liked_ that.

Huh.

Okay then. Wow. That was a kicker.

Except…

“We didn’t kill them,” he noted, softly, pulling back to look at Cas, and Dean heard something in his own voice that wasn’t steady—a little dangerous, a little dark still. The initial rush of triumph, of _elation_ , had felt like the bubbles in a fresh pour of beer—but now it was turning sharper, sour. Cas wasn’t out. Shit. He _wasn’t out_. “That’s gonna get around.”

The quiet contentment in blue eyes fizzled, and all of a sudden that wasn’t a badass sexy sonofabitch, there was Dean’s awkward little accountant looking at him again, peeking through that sleepy warmth. Dean couldn’t have even said why that gave him one great big aching thump through the chest, ringing through his sternum like a gong. It rang doorbell louder when he saw the look on Cas’s face change.

“Ah,” Castiel said, very softly. “I… I should not have …” His lips tightened sharp to a tense line, and it wasn’t the cold that was back in his face now, but it _was_ the mask, hauled on in a hurry, not quite on right. “I see. I should go.” He reached for the door with one hand, straightening his clothes with the other, grimacing at the sticky mess now. “I don’t think you need worry, Dean. I doubt anyone is foolish enough to believe it anyway.”

What? Shit. _Fuck_. That wasn’t—Dean rushed his mind hurriedly through his own words. Well, fuck, that maybe hadn’t… come out right at _all_.

“ _Cas_.”

“I should report the incident. You should, too.”

“Cas, _stop_ , hey—”

Cas met his eyes. There was nothing behind his expression, none of the shy, none of those startling moments of sweet, not even that hint of the amusement he pointed at Dean so often—just _nothing,_ and it was fucking _terrifying_. His full lips twisted up in some mockery of those shaky smiles Dean sometimes got when he caught Cas on his way out and reeled him back in for just a little bit more sugar, just one more kiss. “This was enjoyable, we should—” He twisted to reach for the door handle.

Dean snatched for the shoulder Cas had turned away from him, coiled up and over to plant a knee between Cas’s thighs, and _shoved_ until Cas’s back hit the bench seat again. He thought for a second, from the tension ratcheting Cas’s body, that he was gonna have to fight him anyway. He wasn’t sure _how_ that was gonna end up, because knowing what he knew about Castiel Novak, even in close quarters and with height on him Dean wasn’t sure he could _win_ without trying to do actual damage.

But this, this mattered.

He was looming over Cas now, knees on the seat, hovering his ass over one of Cas’s legs with his head hung down to keep from hitting it on Baby’s roof. It was awkward, yeah, but Dean also had him pinned down by the shoulders with the force of his own weight, and that was what he’d been going for. “Hey. Stop, _stop_. Hey. Shit.” In the dark, Cas’s eyes were two pools of shadow, and his expression was calm and empty. The mask was fitted on tight now. “Look, that’s not what I—”

“Of course. I am aware of your view on relationships.”

Dean made a low, frustrated noise that pulled at his already abused throat. Shit, he hated that voice, that slow monotone of gravel. No, except he really didn’t, he hated when Cas pointed it at _him_ like that: like a wall, like a weapon. “Look, that’s not what I— _yeah_ , okay, I don’t do… relationships. It ain’t gone well for me in the past—”

“ _You’re a charming, handsome killer, Dean, and I don’t want you near my boy—”_

“—and you and me, it’d be an issue no matter what, shit, we don’t even live in the same city—"

Castiel was so still under him, his whole body in full retreat now, hands resting limply on the seat to either side of him, and that was more terrible than him fighting.

Dean had figured out awhile ago how touch-starved Cas was—the way he curved his body into Dean’s, how he hesitated before reaching out sometimes. People didn’t touch him because they were afraid of him, Dean supposed. Or, more likely, because they just couldn’t figure out that Cas’s reserve and the way he could smack someone down with a glare didn’t make him any less of a fluffy angel puppy sometimes. It wasn’t like Kapitan Awkward ever did anything to change that opinion, but he’d always let himself touch Dean before.

He wasn’t doing it now.

“I understand,” Castiel said, calmly, with an awful serenity. He said it like he’d heard it all before. He might have. “You do not have to explain.”

He was so fucking stubborn that sometimes Dean just wanted to shoot him. “Jesus, Cas, no, you _don’t_ get it,” he barked. “You just pretty much _outed_ yourself! To the goddamned _North Gang_!”

Castiel didn’t even bat a long dark eyelash. “I suppose,” he said, softly, and he did not sound like he gave a shit about that. For the first time in Dean’s memory, he looked away—out the window and into the very interesting wall less than a few feet from the Impala’s door.

He ‘supposed?’ Jesus _fuck,_ what was he thinking?! “Look, you cocky sonofabitch, _you_ might be fine puttin’ a target on your own head like that, but I am _not_ okay with it!” Dean gritted out, and his hands tightened on Cas’s shoulders. “That was not your brother out there, that was not _my_ brother, that was fucking _hostiles._ So the next time you’re planning to come jumping out of the closet to a bunch of North Side assholes who _speak your language_ and can, y’know, _talk to the Bratva_ you need to warn me _first_! ‘Cause you live in fucking _Brooklyn_. I can’t always watch your back!”

“It doesn’t matter,” Cas told him, still quiet. “As I’ve said, I am very capable of defending myself. It’s just… a distraction.”

He sounded like he was trying to convince himself of that.

He sounded like he wasn’t talking about coming out at all.

That would probably have hurt more if Dean weren’t already so mad. “Fuck you,” he snapped. “Like Hell it doesn’t _matter_. Cas, if you end up getting hurt ‘cause of some Bratva bullshit about this I will _end them_. I do not care who I have to go through.” He knew his voice was dangerous. “I ain’t joking.”

He really wasn’t.

Castiel blinked, once, very slowly, like he was waking up.

Dean reached out and touched his chin, still turned away from him, and swallowed. But he righted Cas’s face, turned it back towards him. Cas’s eyes were still a million miles away. “Hey,” he said, his voice gruff, and it wasn’t because of the blowjob. “Look, Cas. Look at me. You had it right the first time. I want all of it. Okay? The whole damn thing. And if you think I don’t you got hit too hard on the head.” His lips twitched in a rueful little smile. “But sure as fuck I’m gonna burn the world down bloody if anything happens to you ‘cause of it.”

Castiel very visibly stopped fleeing into the back of his mind.

His eyes suddenly focused on Dean, really _focused,_ oh, there was that look he knew. Dean wondered if Cas was breathing. Pressed his fingers against the notch of Cas’s collarbone to make sure. He thought about looking away from those piercing, impossible eyes, really _thought_ for once about the questions he couldn’t answer, the ones that Cas had never asked, and… he didn’t look away.

Maybe he _could_ answer some of those questions now.

Finally, when Cas said something, it was so deep and so small it was almost a feeling more than words. “I don’t… what are you saying?”

Dean chuckled, shakily. “I dunno, does ‘boyfriend’ sound any better in Russian than in English? ‘Cause you’re right, it sounds really effing stupid in English.”

This time, Castiel’s lips just sort of parted a little like he’d run right out of batteries. Yeah, Dean was going to get absolutely no help from that department.

Dean swiped a hand through his own hair. “Look, I’m really shitty at talking about this crap,” he mumbled, into the Impala’s darkness. “I am extra bad because Hell, ripping myself open and _discussing_ it has led to me being left _every fucking time_ , but— _shit_ , Cas.” Dean brought the hand down and nudged a thumb into _his_ spot, that tiny little stubbly dimple right under Cas’s bottom lip.

He stroked it, back and forth, watching the motion of his fingers. Dean wondered just how long he’d thought of that spot as ‘his.’

“You’re goddamned amazing, you sonofabitch. And this part of my job—” Dean waved vaguely out of the Impala’s window, gestured at the bloody slash on his own sleeve. “This is the part that ain’t a job. _This_ is the shit that fucks people up. It breaks people. Scares them. But you _get_ it.”

There was the first real expression peeking through the mask—there was Dean’s confused owl, crinkling his eyebrows. “I would not be much good at being Parakh if I didn’t,” Castiel agreed, in a tone that clearly suggested that he thought Dean’s brain had gone off somewhere on a road trip he wasn’t in the car for.

Dean huffed. Why was talking so freaking _difficult_? “Yeah, exactly, that’s my _point_.” He dropped their foreheads together, clunking them just a little too hard, and Cas made a small, displeased grunt underneath him. “Look, I know how it is. You’re over in Brighton Beach, I’m here. That’s _fine._ But it also fucking _sucks._ ” He blew out a breath, and chuckled, just a little ruefully. “I know you’re a badass. Jesus, _do_ I, and yes, you’re gonna let me blaspheme right now all that I goddamn want. ‘Cause _yeah,_ I’m so damned proud of you and I want you so bad I could kinda explode, but you have no idea just how much I sorta want to stick you back into the damned closet anyway.” He thumped hard on Castiel’s shoulder for good measure. “And _Hell_ , Cas, ‘back into the closet’ are words I _never ever_ want to say again, do you hear me?!”

“Yes?” Castiel tried, and he was giving Dean a full-on squint now from very close up. Which was probably because Dean wasn’t even sure he was making sense anymore. “I hear you. But… I’m not afraid.”

 _Way to take the wind outta my goddamned sails, Cas._ “That’s ‘cause you don’t have the sense God gave guinea pigs,” Dean told him, firmly.

Castiel just looked at him. “I like guinea pigs,” he finally answered, apropos of absolutely fucking nothing, and Dean stared. “What do they have to do with anything?”

Cas wasn’t meaning to be funny, this time. He really wasn’t. That didn’t mean that Dean wasn’t going to firmly and decisively _lose his shit_.

“You’ve lost your mind,” Cas stated, flatly, the words muffled into Dean’s collarbone from where Dean had draped himself about halfway over Cas’s head. His tone strongly suggested, ‘ _again.’_ Yeah, okay, maybe Dean’s whooping and the way he was slapping a hand on the Impala’s back seat might have sounded just a little hysterical.

How had his life turned into this, _seriously_? How was Dean sitting in the back of his Baby on the lap of this fucking _amazing_ nerdy little accountant who used a knife like he’d been born with it in his hand, and couldn’t catch a reference with both hands and a baseball mitt?

“ _Cas_ ,” Dean cackled, “I wasn’t the one talking ‘bout—you know what, never mind.” But he huffed out the rest of his laughter, sitting back and thumbing at the puffy corner of Cas’s mouth. Cas’s face twitched just a little as the pad of Dean’s finger scraped across the split. “Hell. Look at us. Between tonight and everything else, we’re fucking halfway to fluid bonded already.”

Dean sort of regretted saying that the moment it was out of his mouth. It was not, though, because he didn’t want that—now that he was thinking about it, it sounded _really hot_ , oh shit, it really did. Dean had never had sex without a condom on in his entire life, but some weird little bit of him _really_ liked the idea of them marking each other up like that. He wanted to spread two fingers in Cas’s pucker and watch his own come trickling out between them. He wanted to squirm a little, feeling the mess between his cheeks and knowing it wasn’t just lube. He wanted to fuck and get fucked by Cas _bare,_ with nothing but heat between them inside and out.

However, the idea of having to _explain_ what fluid bonding was to Castiel Novak was making Dean want to die a little.

“Really.” Castiel raised just one eyebrow, but at least he wasn’t giving Dean the thousand-yard stare anymore.

Okay, either he didn’t have to explain, or the Bratva did some kind of freaky blood ritual. Whatever, they’d figure it out later. “Like you said, s’been pretty… exceptional.” Dean shrugged, and lifted his head just enough that they weren’t breathing each other’s air and he could almost, just barely, catch the rim of indigo in those fucking amazing eyes. “Like… y’know. The exclusive kind of exceptional. If that was something you were thinking ‘bout, too.”

But Cas was looking up at the Impala’s roof, now, looking so exasperated that Dean wanted to smile. Yeah, _there_ he was. There was the sassy control freak who did not put up with Dean’s bullshit.

“Dean,” he began, slowly, the rumble in his voice faraway thunder inside the Impala’s closed doors. “You are an idiot. You knew from the beginning I did not play at one-night stands. There hasn’t _been_ anyone but you. Not since the first time.”

Oh.

“Well… I, uh… there… um… it’s just been you, too,” Dean admitted, and admitting that must have sounded like even more of a confession coming out of him—shit, well, it _was_ one, Dean enjoyed sex, he really did. A lot. “I haven’t been with someone else. Guy or girl. Not in… uh… yeah. Kind of… awhile.”

A long while.

He hadn’t even missed it. Dean had a hand, didn’t he? He just hadn’t seen the point in going out looking for some mediocre sex with someone he had to warm up to, someone he had to convince himself he wanted, when what he’d been having with Cas once or twice a month was just that much _better._

Castiel’s eyes popped wider before they narrowed again with very obvious disbelief, and Dean scowled at him. “What?” he complained, scowling. “I mean, I thought about it, yeah. I went out, and then, just… backed out a couple of times. Then I dunno, maybe ‘round… I dunno, September, I stopped… trying.” He shrugged, awkwardly. “I guess it _is…_ you know, different, with someone who…” okay he was gonna stop talking _now._ Dean rubbed the back of his neck and tried for breezy. Almost made it. “Well, anyway, you’ve been in town a lot.”

“Yes,” Cas answered, dryly. “I am just that easy.”

Dean shoved at his shoulder with a snort. “Oh, shut up, will you? Look, I’m here, okay? If we’re doing this, you do not fucking deal with the heat from this alone. You don’t. You hear me?” he put a little more pressure on Cas’s chin, forcing their gazes in a way that he didn’t normally do. He didn’t normally need to. “Bumping into you in that bar is probably the best goddamned thing that’s happened to me since Bobby took me an’ Sam in. But I kept letting you go and I’m _not doing_ it anymore.”

Oh, shit, they needed to put a leash on his tongue, because Dean had not actually meant to say that last bit _at all_. That was just a little _too_ true.

Cas could’ve ribbed him for that. Dean knew he would have, in Cas’s place. Cas could probably see the color on Dean’s cheeks even as dark as it was in this car. Hell, Dean might’ve been so day-glo that Cas could see the color on his cheeks from _outside_ the car.

Castiel didn’t say anything though, just smiled a disbelieving, shaky, private thing out of the corner of his mouth. One of his hands came up, rounded at Dean’s ear, followed it behind to that soft patch covering bone. He pressed, gently, with his thumb. “Mm.”

“What?” Dean grumbled, fighting to keep his eyes from crossing at the slow stroking pressure. Weirdest massage he’d ever gotten, but damn, that felt really…

“Just thinking.”

“About what?”

“A saying I’ve heard, I suppose.” Castiel shrugged, and the hand left its massage spot—a little to Dean’s disappointment. He slid down with his fingertips to straighten Dean’s collar, run his palm over Dean’s hair in a surprisingly soft swipe. “Nока еще ты на руках и губах моих, я побуду с тобой.”

Okay, Cas speaking in the rolling, purring syllables of Russian, the way his voice, impossibly, dropped even a little further when he did? That _did_ it for Dean in ways he really hadn’t expected. Huh. “So… something about a cold, dark winter and despair, and vodka, then?” he joked.

Castiel glared at the center of Dean’s chest with both hands gripping the open flaps of Dean’s jeans. He fastened up the buttons from top to bottom, nowhere near as roughly as he could have, but not precisely… gently. Dean sucked in a breath and held it. Yeah, alright, maybe Dean should not have cracked that joke with a pair of really strong hands so near bits he didn’t want someone to be rough with. “ _What_ have I told you about foolish prejudices?”

Dean _thought_ that was a playful glare. Possibly. Maybe. But he grinned, and once his jeans were all done up, let his weight down lightly on Castiel’s knee so he could sit up just a little further without hitting his head on Baby’s roof. Then tilted his chin up to give Castiel a view of his throat—not that Cas would need to _see_ his throat to kill him, but it was the thought that counted—and encourage him to get started on his other buttons, since it looked like that was what he was doing, buttoning Dean all back up. It was kind of cute.

Castiel stroked a thumb silently up and down the bare center of Dean’s throat.

“No, really,” Dean insisted, and the thumb paused on his Adam’s apple.

Castiel leaned into the invitation, pressed an openmouthed kiss right where Dean’s jaw slid into his neck, with just that tiniest hint of teeth that Dean really liked. He didn’t look into his eyes when he pulled back, just at the hands he still had putting Dean to rights, and started buttoning his flannel up from the bottom. The weirdo.

Castiel was about three fourths of the way up when he finally answered, his voice like the sound of the Impala’s engine on a straight stretch of highway, “I believe it translates as ‘as long as you’re still on my hands and lips, I’ll be with you.’”

Dean had already had his lips a little parted to say something, and they just kind of stayed that way. He only realized his mouth was getting dry when Castiel got to the top button. Cas still had his eyes fixed on the very careful motions of his own hands like he needed all his concentration to put plastic through flannel slot.

Yeah, right. This was a guy who’d caught Dean’s spare blade out of midair and gone to town with it in one hand and his own in the other. The fact that he’d looked _so_ fucking good doing it was just a bonus.

Maybe if Cas didn’t look up, he wouldn’t see how hard Dean was blushing.

“You romantic asshole,” Dean finally managed. “I like that. That’s kinda nice.”

Castiel’s smile when he finally met Dean’s eyes was small, and shy, and real, and in the darkness there might have been just a touch of pink on his cheeks, too.

*_*_*_*

The drive home was quiet. Cas had his not-a-sword lying across his lap, and it flashed in every streetlight—he’d explained it stayed inside the sleeve of that coat of his because it was sewn in with breakaway threads, but that meant that once it was out it was staying out until he sewed it back in. He didn’t fidget. Well, he never did. Dean was probably doing enough of that for the both of them, and since _he_ wasn’t the one who had spunk drying on his stomach that was probably saying something.

Dean stopped them on the little porch and gestured at his front door, smirking. Cas blinked at him, looking confused.

“I don’t have a key, Dean,” he stated, slowly.

Dean scoffed. “Oh, please, since when have _you_ needed a key to get in?”

Castiel blinked, twice, then answered, frowning, “There’s no enjoyment if you _know_ I’m doing it.”

Dean rolled his eyes, chuckled, and muscled past him, reaching for his key in its chain. “All right, all right, I guess it’s a special occasion or something, no B&E for _you_ today,” and that got a rusty little chuckle out of Cas, too. It drained some of the tension out of his shoulders all the way up until Cas was carefully hanging up his trench coat in the entryway and pulling his phone out of its inner pocket.

Deliberately, Dean touched Cas’s elbow, drawing his attention away from the cellphone the guy was trying to incinerate with his eyes. “Hey,” he started, then trailed off.

But Cas just shook his head. “Talk to Capo Singer.” He hesitated, again, and Dean felt the arm under his fingers tense up—

Cas leaned in and dropped a slightly-too-hard kiss on the corner of Dean’s mouth before he stalked towards the kitchen, his face a ridiculous shade of red. Yeah, okay, Dean maybe had to stand there in his foyer for a little bit with his own cheeks burning before he walked into his bedroom and reached for his own cellphone, peering out for just a second as Cas’s voice started up.

Bobby picked up on the first ring. Dean was pretty sure that considering it was somewhere between oh-dark-hundred and why-the-fuck-o’clock, Bobby didn’t actually sleep. “Yeah?” he snapped.

“Couple of Ketch’s guys were makin’ a funny while I was up North today,” Dean told his boss—not his uncle, not right this second. “It was real comical.”

“I… see. Uh-huh. Bet it was,” Bobby sounded not at all concerned. “You take ‘em out for breakfast or am I gonna have to call the cleaners?”

“Nah.” Dean peeled off his flannel carefully, hissing as the old blood stuck, and looked at the cut on his bicep. It was long, but shallow, not even bleeding anymore. It wouldn’t need stitches. His side was going to be really stiff in the morning, but it was nothing he couldn’t handle. “No casings.”

“I’d be bustin’ you back down to soldato if there were,” Bobby growled. “Day you can’t handle a joke without a gun, you _deserve_ it.”

Dean snorted. “Yeah, yeah. They went sharp first.” Which had been stupid of them from the beginning, but watching them almost piss their pants when they held out their little switchblades and Castiel shook that freaking _sword_ out of his sleeve had been _something_ else. “And they’ll live. Not sure they’ll all walk again.”

“Well, ain’t that a treat.” Bobby was pretty obviously bored, now. “That it, boy?”

Dean sucked in a soft, shaky breath between his teeth at the memory of Cas grabbing one of the assholes by the throat and just _throwing_ him backwards over his knee. “Uh…” he sat down on the edge of his bed. Then stood up again and paced a small circle. This really should not be difficult. “Cas was there. Um. Castiel. Novak.”

Oh, yeah, like _any_ of them knew anyone else with a name like that.

“Was he?” Now there was a dangerous hint of curiosity in Bobby’s voice. “Well, now, the Bratva’s in town, but I ain’t heard none of _that._ You tellin’ me he’s in bed with Ketch’s folk? That’s _way_ outta line, Dean—”

Dean blinked. “No! Jesus Christ, _no,_ Bobby, fuck!” Okay, he’d already had it out with Cas, Bobby knew which way Dean swung, so why was it all of a sudden hard to just tell the voice in his ear right now? He scratched hard at the nape of his neck with his nails, let the scrape of it settle him. “He was there with _me_. Me an’ Cas, we’re kind of, uh.” Dean was a fucking grown adult. “We’re together. Have been, awhile now.”

Yeah, that really should have been easier to say.

“Really now.” A long pause of breath.

Shit, shit. Yeah, Dean knew how this was supposed to have gone. It had nothing to do with them both being guys, or even them both being in organizations. Anything serious, anything committed, _was_ supposed to go up the chain and in their Outfit it wasn’t a freaky control thing, it was ‘cause shit like tonight _happened_ and sometimes it happened to people who didn’t carry a fucking _sword_ under their ugly trench coat. “Yeah, um. Since… uh…” Dean stopped his feet from shuffling like a little kid’s. “Prob’ly last April, I guess.”

Just because Dean hadn’t acknowledged it then, hadn’t _known_ it then, didn’t make it any less true.

Dean’s heartbeat occupied the silence that followed those words.

“You wanna run that by me again, Dean?” and Bobby’s drawl was thick enough to drag, now. “‘Cause you know I do not give three fucks ‘bout whether you screw men or women or Chinese cabbages, but you wouldn’t be doin’ nothing to compromise the Outfit… and it sure _sounded_ like you said you’ve been sneakin’ ‘round with the Parakh of the Novak Bratva for near-on _ten months_ , now.” Pause. “An’ I could not be hearin’ that right.”

Shit, shit, _shit_. Dean swallowed. “Uh. Yeah, that… yeah.”

The soft electronic silence on the other end burned like Bobby’s rotgut. Dean looked down the hallway at where he could see Cas’s shadow in the kitchen, leaning against the wall with what looked like his fingers pressed to the bridge of his nose. His voice was a soft rumble of faraway thunder. When he couldn’t stand the breathing on the other end of the phone line anymore, Dean squeezed his eyes shut.

“ _Balls,_ ” Bobby snarled.

Dean winced like he wasn’t a fully grown-ass adult male who hit people for a living. “ _Look_ , Bobby—"

Bobby cut him off, bursting out with, “Well, _shit_ , that’ll teach me to bet ‘gainst a man’s brother!”

The silence hung like a veil in Dean’s mind for just a second before he blurted out, “What?”

“Gabriel, nah, Gabriel thought it was May, said Castiel started disappearing off at nights and that ain’t like him. But that couldn’t be, right, you two barely met, I thought,” Bobby grumbled, and Dean really hoped the high-pitched noise that he could hear in his ears was only inside his own head, because what the fuck, what the _fuck._ _Gabriel?!_ “So I said no, no fuckin’ way, you wouldn’t’a kept it for that long, but since y’all started getting so friendly in September and all—” he snorted out a long, sarcastic noise. “You two idjits couldn’t’a kept it in your pants even a few months?”

Dean knew his mouth was hanging open, and from the way his temples were pounding he suspected his face was as red as ketchup, but seriously, what the everloving _fuck?_ “Bobby, you _asshole_ —how—" he sputtered, sitting down hard on the bed, and the phone case in his hand creaked.

Bobby made a disgusted noise. “Like anyone coulda missed you two having eye sex across the negotiating table every time the Novak’s in town. And the cutesy nickname, like Castiel Novak lets anyone other than his brother call him by a _nickname_. And all the goddamned _hickeys_.” His bark of a sarcastic laugh was loud enough that Dean lifted the cellphone away from his ear and winced. “Look, boy, what you do with your own time’s your own damned business, but lemme tell you, no-one needed all of that, _no-one_.”

Over in the kitchen, Dean heard Castiel make an alarmingly high, horrified, choked sound. If Bobby was saying this, shit, he could only imagine what _Gabriel_ was saying.

“You never said anything!” Dean put a hand on his own neck as that tone came out of him. Okay, Dean would deny to his dying day that that was a squeak, but that was a lot higher than his normal voice.

“Oh and you’re tellin’ me you two wouldn’t’a ripped the throats out of anyone who suggested it. _Please_ ,” Bobby scoffed. “Well, anyway, congrats, I guess.” He was still muttering halfway through ‘idjits’ when he hung up.

Well, there went every bit of dignity that Dean had ever thought he’d had.

When Cas came back into the room, his shoulders were hunched somewhere around his ears, he looked even shorter than he normally did when he was wearing his too-big coat, and _hoo_ boy Dean didn’t think he’d ever seen the guy looking more in need of a hug. No, Dean definitely did not think he’d gotten the worst of their conversations, not by a long shot. Bobby was his Capo and uncle, sure, but Gabriel was Castiel’s Avtoritet and his _big brother_. And as a big brother himself Dean knew exactly which of Sammy’s buttons to push, and just how hard.

“So, uh, guess they kinda knew,” Dean managed.

Castiel glared at him, and kept walking.

“You in trouble?” Dean asked, only half-joking. Sometimes the older families could be really strict about this kind of shit—not the guy-on-guy crap (though, yeah, there was that too) but the whole… asking your head boss for permission to date crap. “I gotta watch out for a hit squad?”

Castiel hit the bed with his knees and mostly toppled the rest of the way down onto it like a tree falling. “Likely. And no. And I don’t think I will want sex for a long time,” Castiel muttered, forehead pressed into the crook of one folded arm, facedown on Dean’s comforter. He hadn’t even taken off his suit jacket. “ _Especially_ not with you.”

Dean couldn’t even be offended by that. Yeah, he didn’t want to know what Gabriel had said. For one thing, Dean’s conversation years ago about his own sexuality with Sammy had been awkward enough, and Sammy was not his _boss_. For another, Gabriel was a smirky, snarky asshole who liked to make people squirm.

“Yeah, yeah. I hear you,” Dean sighed, and threw himself down on his back beside him. Their hands brushed a little; Dean considered, but he didn’t pull them away, and he didn’t reach out to join their hands either. Just let that little touch _be_ —the sides of their pinkies, side by side. Just breathed into it, looking at the ceiling of his little house.

It wasn’t their house, it was Dean’s. They probably would never have a place that was ‘theirs.’ Dean honestly did not know how the fuck any of this was really gonna work. Maybe this was why two Mafia guys from two different cities weren’t really supposed to try and make it work.

But right now, this was _their_ space, and… this was nice. It was nice like the quiet in the front of the Impala driving home tonight had been nice. It was like drinks at Jeffrey’s and ice cream at Black Dog, like poking Cas into going to a special showing of _A New Hope_ at the Music Box in Southport, the way they had last November. It was like the thought of watching stars with him out in the Batavia countryside, or finding Cas looking meditatively up at that goddamned Bean yet again (he had a truly unhealthy love for the Loop, he really did.)

It wasn’t nice like sex was, or even like breathing together in the same space with sweat drying on both of them, and all that was already… pretty damned good.

‘Pretty damned good?’ Fucking understatement of the _year_.

Dean blinked, slowly, at the light overhead.

Dean was an asshole. He was not a _pushy_ asshole, not in general, but he was an asshole, and when his index finger slid along the side of Castiel’s wrist, Cas shivered. Dean smiled and ran his fingertip around and around that little knob of bone, continued up and over to feel the kick of a strong, steady, accelerating pulse.

He really, _really_ loved how many tiny, sensitive patches Cas had.

_Mine, all mine._

Huh. And there was that.

“So,” he asked casually. “How long’s ‘a long time,’ again?”

Castiel turned his face, just slightly, from where it was resting on his other arm, and the look that he gave Dean was blue-eyed, a little tired, kind of amused with Dean’s bullshit… and not in the least bit pissed-off. Oh, yep, after all these months, Dean recognized _that_ look.

“Perhaps the length of a shower?” Cas offered, and his voice was low and slow and purring.

Dean grinned, and eyed the purple hickey peeking up from Castiel’s open collar greedily. “ _Deal_.”

Castiel Novak was a weird, violent, socially awkward sonofabitch, make no mistake.

He always had been—always would be, Dean was pretty sure. His Bratva and his brother would always come first, he would probably never get a reference _ever_ , he still hadn’t seen _The Princess Bride_ , and he carried a handkerchief in his pocket to clean off blood. He was way too intense in missionary, and he had what Dean thought was a slightly unhealthy obsession with leaving bite marks on the insides of Dean’s thighs.

And now he was, very officially, _Dean’s_ weird, violent, socially awkward sonofabitch.

Fuck, _yeah._

Dean wouldn’t have had it any other way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just the epilogue to go, friends... I hope you have had as much fun on this ride as I have. Forgive me for the minimum of smut. They needed to finally talk it out and Dean's a sap, as it turns out. (Apparently, so is Cas, so I guess that worked out.)
> 
> The Magnificent Mile, from which this last story gets its name, is the Fifth Avenue of Chicago. I swear I meant them to end up there somehow, but they... well, you see what they decided to do instead.
> 
> The Morton Arboretum is about an hour and a half outside Chicago—1,700 acres of public garden, including driving roads throughout with parking alcoves (let’s just say that Cas and Dean would probably have no trouble finding a place to make out on the Impala.) It's speckled with strange bits of adorableness: giant troll statues in repose, creatures made of Lego, lights through the trees at certain times of the year.
> 
> The Music Box theater is in Southport (despite the name, this is not in South Chicago… it's near Wrigley Field.) It’s a historic movie theater from the 1930s, which I'm sure Dean would consider terribly hipster, but it does serve beer and show classic scifi on the big screen—so it must be fine!


	2. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bobby really wonders how he managed to raise an idjit.

“Can’t believe those idjits thought they were being _subtle_ ,” Bobby complained, slumping in his chair and swirling his latest batch of rotgut moonshine around in a tumbler. “I mean, they oughtta be ashamed if they thought no-one could see it. Hell, _we_ oughtta be ashamed, what’ve we been teachin’ ‘em all these years?!”

Yeah, this wasn’t what he’d meant to be talking about with Gabriel Novak in private discussions today. Yeah, the North Side was acting up and if Arthur Ketch didn’t whip up there was gonna be a reckoning to be had here in Chicagoland.

And no, Bobby Singer didn’t give a fuck.

Dean and Castiel Novak had showed up to the meeting this morning in tandem, five minutes late, unshaven. Castiel had been wearing a black t-shirt that Bobby was pretty sure was one of _Dean’s_ rather than his normal white button-down and tie, under a very obviously crumpled suit jacket. Dean had matching hickeys on both sides of his neck. It was like they were now determined to _prove_ they could be more obvious.

A grand total of _fucking no-one_ had looked surprised.

(Garth didn’t count.)

Sam took one look and then two steps away from the both of them, which in Bobby’s opinion was just more evidence that he was the smarter Winchester brother.

“I don’t know,” Gabriel answered, nonchalantly sucking on yet another lollipop. Bobby did not wanna know how much that man paid his dentist. “I thought it was kind of cute. Like some sort of awkward… lizard mating dance. Or something.”

Bobby glared at his Russian counterpart, and the Novak shrugged, both hands up and flicking his head to the side in a way that was probably supposed to be some kind of imitation of his stoic little brother, but really… wasn’t. “What can I say?” Gabriel smirked, and looked scarily gleeful about it. “Look, I’ve known that kid his whole life. I’ve never seen Cassie all twitterpated over a boy before. Or a girl.” He sucked noisily on his teeth. “Or, you know, _ever_.”

Bobby gaped. “You call _that_ twitterpated?” From what Bobby could tell, Angel Novak had had Dean practically chasing his own damned tail feathers around for the past six or so months!

Wait, no. Ten months.

Yeah, maybe Bobby was still a bit ticked off ‘bout that. The boy had thought he couldn’t come to him, _really?!_

“If you’d asked me a year ago, I would have said that our Cassie, Heaven love him, only comes with three settings: one,” Gabriel raised up a finger, “‘Serious with a dash of humorless.’ Two,” another finger, “The one best described as ‘I don’t get that reference.’ And three,” the third finger, “The one no-one can describe because anyone who’s ever seen it is now dead.” Both of his eyebrows waggled, and he put down his fingers. “The fact that he can add ‘befuddled by Dean Winchester’ to that list? I don’t know, that’s as good as a wedding proposal from him.”

Bobby snorted, loudly. “You’re talkin’ like you know what happened here, but my street boss makin’ cow eyes at your Parakh ain’t _normal,_ Novak. I mean, boy never knew how to keep his junk in his pants but he don’t get attached, neither.”

Not since that fuckery with Lisa and Ben those years ago, anyway.

Gabriel just shrugged. “Yeah, well. Y’know, when I told Cassie to be discreet I just meant don’t get someone _pregnant_ or hook up with a married guy or wear body glitter to meetings or something, that shit gets _everywhere._ He took it to mean ‘be a monk.’ And yet…” he spread his hands dramatically. “Here we are.” He shook his head. “So I’m not even sure which pretty boy’s the catnip to who here.”

Bobby grunted, and refilled Gabriel’s glass, and they drank in silence for a long moment. Bobby was looking up at the ceiling and turning his tumbler between his fingers when he muttered, carefully, “He, uh, your brother’s gonna be okay? No offense, not sayin’ you can’t handle your own, but I get the feeling your organization’s pretty ass backwards about some shit still.”

Yeah, ‘cause there was two guys hanging out and no-one looking sideways, and then there was two coming flying out of the closet, guns blazing like Thelma and Louise.

Bobby remembered those first days after Dean had come to live with him, just after they’d buried John Winchester. He did not regret what he’d done to protect that kid. His place wasn’t down the straight and narrow, Bobby Singer did not fool himself about that, but his Outfit was _clean_ and it was _safe_ and it was _good._ Or, at least, now it was. If Dean didn’t know just how many eggs a man had to break to get the omelet right, well, Bobby was just fine with him not knowing.

If Dean did know?

Well, then, Heaven help whoever tried to come after Castiel Novak. The Angel wasn’t the only one with a reputation he’d earned in blood.

Gabriel sighed, and bit into his lollipop with a crunch. “Yeah. Well. About that.” He leaned his elbows forward onto the desk and plopped his chin into his hands. “How would _you_ feel, Bobby-O, about a semi-permanent loan of bad-tempered awkward accountant in your territory?” He pulled another candy out of his pocket. “He really _is_ good at the books, actually, if you need something like that. Or, you know, someone wiped out with extreme prejudice.”

Huh. Bobby blinked, thoughtfully, warily. It’d send a message, that was for sure, but from the trail of broken bodies last night? He was pretty sure the North Side Gang had already started getting _that_ message loud and clear. “Wouldn’t say no, ‘specially after last night,” he admitted, slowly. “Your guy’s got a Hell of a rep. But you ready for that?”

Gabriel’s eyes were whiskey and fire, and around the lollipop his smile was _mean_ for such a little guy. “Bobby. Ketch is gonna say that those fucktards just went after Dean. Not your street boss, just _Dean._ Right? You guys trade punches like that all the time,” he wobbled a whoop-de-doo finger in the air. “’Cept they went after my brother, too, all unprompted, an’ Cassie ain’t Outfit, Bobby, he’s _Bratva._ ” He laughed, a snickery, vicious little thing. “Shit, they better watch out when _Kali_ hears ‘bout this, he’s her favorite. She is gonna come down here with a flamethrower and a Kalashnikov, mark my words.”

Bobby gave Gabriel an unimpressed look. “Your brother dissected ‘em with his pinkies.” Dean had been giving Garth a blow-by-blow of it earlier and _Jesus._ Bobby was happy Dean was happy, but he did not ever want to see that blissful, hungry look on his kid’s face again, just _no_. “Alastair ain’t gonna walk again.”

“So?” Gabriel grinned. “That shit is still _war._ ” He twirled his lollipop between his fingers. “You want in?”

Dammit. Bobby was sick and tired of Ketch and his shenanigans. He was tired of the games, tired of the dancing, the fancy talk and the back-talk and the guns locked and loaded in every conversation. Enough was really fucking _enough_.

“Let’s do this,” Bobby told him. “Blood and fire. Clean as a shot of vodka.”

“Man after my own heart.” Gabriel waggled both his eyebrows again and Bobby was getting a bad feeling about this—“But I’ll have you know, Cassie’s my preciousest baby brother,” he singsonged. “I’m expecting a dowry!”

Bobby groaned.

Fuckin’ Russians.

~fin~

**Author's Note:**

> So here we are... I can't believe my little one-shot (which originally had fade-to-black sex scenes!) turned into the most writing I've ever done in a month. I've really grown to love my grouchy Mafia boyos, and I will be sad to say goodbye to them. I think they've earned themselves some closure, so I don't have anything more planned! That said, if there's anything in particular you're dying to see, let me know: I am happy to try to fill requests!
> 
> Thank you so much to everyone who sent kudos and comments and encouragement, and stuck around for more.  
> You can consider yourselves wholly to blame for the three stories that came after South Side!
> 
> And to everyone on the [Profound Bond Discord server](https://discord.gg/profoundbond): I was terrified to even start writing anything for this fandom, and I would not, and could not, have posted a single word without you guys.


End file.
